mapping a flat mesh onto a sphere?

[fallingbrickwork]

Hi all,

I have a couple of flat meshs (basically they are flat planes divided up into multiple triangles) and I want to wrap these around an imaginary sphere.

Does any one know the best way to do this? What 3D package to use?

Cheers in advance...

[B@z]

well i dont know how does it work, but i heard about "decal"s.
It's a mesh what follows the other mesh's shape.
search in the forum for it.

[JP]

Do you want to form the plane into a sphere, or do you want to project a texture onto a sphere?

[fallingbrickwork]

JP - Yeah I want to form the plane into a sphere, well a part sphere if that makes sense... the sphere needs to be quite large and the square plane is only small in comparison... I don't want the dimensions of the plane to alter, just form the spheres shape. imagine taking a piece of paper the size of your hand and holding it onto a football.

B@z - I'll try and look into this.

I would like to perform this transformation outside of Irrlicht in a 3D editor if poss as I have many different shapes to transform. I think 3D studio Max can do it but i don't have Max.

[oldskoolPunk]

Blender can do this in at least 2 different ways.
1. Use warp. This will warp the mesh around the 3d cursor, the mouse wheel controlling the power of the warp, from a slight bend all the way to a sphere.

2. The Retopo tool will actually plaster a mesh onto another mesh exactly as you described. Handy for stuff like redoing the topology of a mesh, or stuff like plastering meshes to other meshes.